


i'm not sorry, there's nothing to save

by nikkiRA



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Felix and Sylvain non-Azure Moon Ending, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: He just sighs; he is so very, very tired. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I never knew you at all.” He watches the fight drain out of Felix; he looks smaller, now. Breakable. More like the man Sylvain had loved, before he carved out his heart to fight til the death for a dead prince who would never know. He looks almost sad, now. Like he had been hoping for a fight, and Sylvain had disappointed him.Sylvain has always been good at being a disappointment.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	i'm not sorry, there's nothing to save

**Author's Note:**

> a warning: i am not tagging this as major character death because i merely follow through on the vagueness that the sylvix ending card outside of azure moon says, which, if you want a reminder, is this:
> 
> _Even after the war's end, skirmishes continued to break out across Fódlan. Learning that there were still places where he could fight, Felix abandoned his noble title and chose to make a living with his sword. Decades later, he reunited briefly with Sylvain, who had need of his services as Margrave Gautier. Felix departed as soon as the job was finished, however, and the two never met again. Years later, a sword that was thought to have belonged to Felix arrived on Sylvain's doorstep._
> 
> idek the last time i wrote straight up angst but it's canon babey!! don't blame me blame fire emblem!!
> 
> and yes this is the second time i've written a fic based on your ex-lover is dead by stars what about it

It is twenty-four years after the war ends that Felix shows up at his door. Sylvain is annoyed to find that he looks largely the same, just with the occasional streak of grey at his roots and throughout his ponytail. He is still lean and muscular, hand never leaving his sword. His eyes are sharp, but they never make eye-contact with Sylvain, fixing on his shoulder. But beneath the subtle signals of age, he is still undeniably Felix. The sight of him makes Sylvain feel dizzy with too many emotions to sort through. 

Felix has a scowl on his face and does not greet Sylvain as if it has been twenty-four years. He just takes a seat across from him and then says, “What is so important that you needed to track me down?”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “Hello to you, too. Is that anyway to greet a friend after twenty years?”

Felix doesn’t answer, just continues to wait. Sylvain wants to strangle him; perhaps calling Felix had been a bad idea. 

But no -- there was no other option. “Alright, guess we’re getting straight to the point. You know that tiny little village in the northeast? The one we got snowed in at during the war, remember?”

Felix narrows his eyes. “What about it?” He asks, which means he remembers. That, at least, is reassuring; no matter how much Felix has distanced himself, he can’t escape their shared pasts. 

“There’s some kind of monster there, terrorizing the town. I need it killed.”

Felix looks thoroughly unimpressed. “Have you gotten so old that you can’t even be bothered to take out one measly monster?”

Sylvain, having anticipated this, lifts up his shirt, showcasing the bandage that runs across his chest. “I tried. And I know I’m not twenty anymore, but that thing took out nearly all of my men and almost killed me. It’s something I’ve never seen before. We’ve been trying for almost a fortnight. We’ve tried magic, we’ve tried fire. There’s only one thing I haven’t tried.”

“And what’s that?”

“You,” Sylvain says grimly. “Worst monster I’ve met probably needs the best swordsman.”

“Are you trying to flatter me?” Felix asks in annoyance. Sylvain laughs. 

“I know well enough that you can’t be flattered,” he says. “But we’ve all heard the rumours. A swordsman who can make hordes of enemies tremble in fear,” he adds, in a lofty, mocking voice. Felix narrows his eyes, and for one tense moment Sylvain thinks he’s gone too far, but then he just sighs. 

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” he says. “You should know that better than anyone.”

“The rumours might be exaggerated, but I still know you,” Sylvain says. “I know what you can do. You can take as many of my men as you need --”

“I don’t need any men,” Felix says. Sylvain opens his mouth, but Felix cuts him off. “They’ll only get in my way.”

“Felix --”

“I mean it,” Felix says sharply. “I don’t want men, and I don’t want payment.”

Now Sylvain is getting annoyed. “Felix, don’t be fucking stupid.”

“Those are my terms, take them or leave them.”

Sylvain clenches his jaw, but he doesn’t really have any other choice except to agree. “Fine. At least let me go with you.”

Felix raises an eyebrow. “With that injury? You’d be nothing more than a liability.”

“This thing is killing  _ my  _ people --”

“And it’ll kill you, if you come with me. Can you even hold a lance right now?”

Sylvain doesn’t want to answer that truthfully, so he doesn’t answer it at all. “I have magic --”

“And the whole fucking time I’ll be too worried about  _ you  _ to get anything done,” Felix snaps. 

“Aw, Felix,” Sylvain says, a cruel twist to his words. “I didn’t know you still cared.”

They stare at each other. It never used to be this hard. Sylvain meets Felix’s eyes for one brutal moment before Felix looks away. Sylvain might feel like he’s won, if all of this didn’t feel so overwhelmingly like a loss. 

Abruptly, Felix stands up. “The sooner I go the better.” The idea of leaving right this minute is so ridiculous an idea that Felix gets all the way to the door before Sylvain realizes that’s what he’s doing. 

“Wait,” he shouts out, standing up and then wincing as pain slices through him. To his relief, Felix turns around. 

“What?” He asks, annoyed. Sylvain gapes at him. 

“You can’t go  _ now,”  _ he says. “The sun has almost set, you have no supplies --”

“I have everything I need,” Felix says.

“Will you just slow down for one  _ fucking  _ second?” Sylvain snaps. He’d forgotten how goddamn frustrating Felix could be, and more than that --

More than that, it had been  _ twenty-four years  _ since the man he loved had  _ left  _ without even fucking telling him, and now here he was, alive and in front of Sylvain, and his chest hurts and Felix can’t even bother to stay for longer than ten fucking minutes. 

Felix sighs, far past annoyed and creeping into outright irritated. He is shifting from foot to foot, eager to leave. As if he can’t even bear spending any time with Sylvain. “What?”

“Are you kidding me? The sun is setting, Felix, going now will be dangerous.”

“I need to track it’s movements,” he says. 

“Is it that difficult to stay in a goddamn room with me?”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Don’t be absurd. Not everything is about you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of hard not to take it personally when you won’t look me in the eye and you’re practically tripping over your feet to get away from me.”

Felix clenches and unclenches his fist, but then he raises his head and looks at Sylvain. Sylvain can’t read anything in his eyes; they remain carefully, infuriatingly blank. “What do you want me to say, Sylvain? What did you think was going to happen? That everything would be the same? We’re not 23 anymore.”

“Yeah, no shit. But I figured that maybe you’d spare a little bit more than three and a half minutes for your --” He cuts off. Felix crosses his arms. 

“My what?” He asks, low. “What do you think we are, Sylvain?”

Now it’s Sylvain who won’t meet his eyes. “Nothing,” he spits out. “We’re nothing, so just… go.”

For one moment, Felix hesitates, and Sylvain feels something almost like hope stutter to life inside his chest, but then Felix shakes his head and leaves without another word. 

* * *

The war ended, and Felix left. Perhaps Sylvain should have seen it coming, but he didn’t. Byleth was made Archbishop, and Claude went to Almyra, and Lorenz took over the Alliance, and Felix left. Sylvain woke up to an empty bed, and he didn't see Felix again.

He looked for him, of course. He went to Fraldarius territory, but Felix’s uncle was there and told him that Felix had renounced his claim and left. Sylvain tried to find him, after that, following rumours of a feared swordsman who was rumoured to be able to beat anyone and everyone. But no matter where he went, he was always a step behind Felix. 

He isn’t sure how long he’d have kept up looking for Felix if his father hadn’t died. He got the news in Goneril territory, checking in with Hilda and her brother; Holst delivered the news, brought to him on Wyvern back and Hilda, perceptive when she wanted to be, watched his face carefully. 

To this day he doesn’t remember going home. In his memories he is with Hilda and then he is at home and there is no in between. He does not remember the funeral, and he does not remember the time leading up to it. What he does remember is this: sitting in his bedroom sobbing while Ingrid rubbed his back, head between his legs and a feeling in his chest like he had a great beast on top of him. 

“He isn’t coming back, is he?” He asked Ingrid, and she was smart enough to know he didn’t mean his father. 

“I think if he had wanted to be found, you would have found him,” Ingrid said gently, hand still rubbing calming circles on his back. 

He sat up and wiped his eyes. “What do I do, Ingrid? It was never supposed to be like this. Felix, and Dimitri -- I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. I should have just… died in the war.”

Ingrid grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, before surprising the hell out of him by pulling him into a hug. Ingrid wasn’t a hugger; Sylvain couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged, and certainly it had never been like this, with Ingrid gripping him so tightly, as if he was about to float away. “Don’t you dare,” she said, and the shock kept coming when he heard her voice thick with tears. “I’ve lost them all. I can’t lose you, too, Sylvain, please.”

He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her hair. “Okay,” he said, as her tears wet his collar and his dripped into her hair. “Okay, okay.” He wanted to promise her, but he thought of two kids and a pinky swear, Felix’s wide eyes and missing tooth,  _ together until we die,  _ and has the thought that maybe promises don’t mean anything, after all. 

* * *

Felix returns two days later with the head of the beast. He drops it on the doorstep and then promptly collapses. Sylvain rushes to the infirmary when he is told the news, where his Healer tells him that Felix is lucky he didn’t lose his arm. On top of that wound, his ribs are bruised -- “how they’re not broken I’ve no idea” -- and he has three great claw marks spread across his chest. Sylvain feels his mouth twist up and touches his own wound. “We match.”

He stays by Felix’s bedside, not necessarily out of concern -- the Healer said Felix would recover nicely -- but because he knows the minute Felix wakes up he’ll try and leave, and Sylvain isn’t done with him yet. 

He sleeps fitfully beside Felix’s bed, jerking awake every so often, but Felix remains asleep. Sylvain studies him with greedy eyes, watching the rise and fall of his chest. There are bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth; Sylvain lets his eyes take their fill, cataloguing every scar he doesn’t know about. 

Felix wakes a day and a half later, as the sun is starting to set. The colours shine through the window, highlighting him in gold, and when he opens his eyes, they seem a hundred times brighter than usual. 

“Sylvain,” he says, hoarsely, and Sylvain grabs the water, helping Felix sit up. Felix drinks the water gratefully, throat bobbing, and Sylvain finds his eyes drawn to it. When he’s finished Sylvain puts the glass back on the table and then sits back, staring at Felix. There are too many emotions swirling within him to name, and he wonders what Felix sees when he looks at him. 

“What’s the damage?” Felix asks. Sylvain has almost twenty-five years of damage he could blame on Felix, but he knows that’s not what he means. 

“You almost lost your arm,” he says, and Felix flinches. This only serves to make Sylvain angrier, the truth that Felix cares only for his sword and nothing else lay bare in front of him, unable to be ignored. “Your ribs are bruised, and we’re going to have matching scars,” he says, tracing his fingers lightly across his chest. “He got you here, like me.”

Felix’s face remains blank at this. “I got him, though,” he says, and Sylvain clenches his fist, digging his fingernails into his palms and letting the pain clear his head. 

“And almost died doing it,” he says sharply. “If you had backup --”

“They would have gotten in my way, and I  _ would  _ have died.”

“Bullshit,” Sylvain says sharply. “You would have had people to look out for you, to stop you from getting hurt.”

“You still got hurt,” Felix says, scowling. “You had a whole army and couldn’t take that thing out, and I did it by myself. You should be thanking me.”

“What if you lost your arm, Felix?” Sylvain says, voice low. “What would you have done? If you couldn’t swing that goddamn sword anymore. What would your purpose be?”

Felix doesn’t look away when he says, “I would have none.”

“Is that your plan?” Sylvain asks. “Fight stupid and recklessly until it catches up to you? Until it kills you? Is that your penance? Do you think he’ll rest easier if you’re dead?”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Felix says, vicious like a cornered cat. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell I don’t!” He yells this, standing up and pacing, arms flailing wildly as he unleashes at Felix. “I was there, Felix, we all fucking were, we all saw him die. Do you think I don’t think about that every goddamn day? About how I deserted him? How I turned my back on my country?”

“It’s not the same,” Felix says. Sylvain laughs. 

“Oh, of course not, because nobody loved him like you, is that it? Not me, or Ingrid, not even Dedue, is that it? Is this your way of apologizing? Do you think that if you die for him it’ll make up for all those years you called him a beast? Do you think he’ll  _ forgive you?” _

Felix moves, as if to strike Sylvain, but the minute he does he doubles over in pain, groaning through gritted teeth. Sylvain moves immediately, helping him back into the bed, pushing pillows behind his back, hands fluttering anxiously around him, until the colour starts to slowly return to his face. 

“Idiot,” he says. “Did you forget you were injured?”

“I don’t need help,” he says stubbornly. Sylvain pours him another glass of water.

“Yes you do, Felix. We all do. All your life you’ve tried to get by on your own but there’s no shame in admitting that you need people.”

Felix shakes his head. “I’m doing just fine.”

Sylvain snorts. “I know you better than that.”

“You don’t know me anymore,” he says, clenching his jaw, a challenge in his eyes. As if waiting for Sylvain to challenge him. 

He just sighs; he is so very, very tired. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I never knew you at all.” He watches the fight drain out of Felix; he looks smaller, now. Breakable. More like the man Sylvain had loved, before he carved out his heart to fight til the death for a dead prince who would never know. He looks almost sad, now. Like he had been hoping for a fight, and Sylvain had disappointed him. 

Sylvain has always been good at being a disappointment. 

“Whatever,” Felix says, and he sounds like a pouting child. “Once my ribs are healed I’ll get out of here, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

Sylvain scoffs. “Like hell. You’re staying here until my Healer releases you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous --”

“This is not up for negotiation, Felix. If you want to die that badly, you can do it once you’re fully healed. But you’re not leaving this bed until you’ve been cleared.”

“Do you really think you can stop me?”

“I have an army worth of soldiers at my command and you can’t sit up without passing out. Don’t test me, Felix, because I will win.”

“I don’t need --”

“I am Margrave,” he says harshly, cutting Felix off. “You will do as I say or I will have you arrested.”

Felix smiles, a horribly cruel thing, his lip snarling up and his eyes glinting as if he’s about to go in for the kill. “Don’t you sound like your father,” he says, almost gleeful in his cruelty. It hits like an arrow to Sylvain’s chest, and he steps back; he sees concern flick across Felix’s features, and he opens his mouth to -- to what? To apologize?

Why should he? He was right. 

But at that moment the door to the infirmary opens and his steward enters. He takes one look at the scene in front of him and then says, with raised eyebrow, “I apologize for the intrusion, my lord. Lady Gautier wanted to know if they should begin dinner without you.”

Sylvain rubs a hand over his face, and misses the look of devastation that flashes across Felix’s. “No, tell her I’ll be right there.”

His steward bows and takes his leave, and Sylvain turns back to see Felix watching him, strangely pale. 

“You’re married,” he says softly. Sylvain resists the urge to hide the hand that wears his wedding ring, and simply nods. Felix looks away, and he takes that as his cue to leave, but as he reaches for the door handle Felix turns back. 

“To who?”

Sylvain doesn’t turn around to look at him when he answers. “You would know if you had responded to any of my letters. Or came to see me even once in the past twenty-five years. I wanted to invite you to the wedding, you know. I wanted you to stand by my side.” 

Felix is quiet, and Sylvain has the door open before he says, still so quiet, “Do you love her?”

Sylvain squeezes his eyes shut. “You don’t get to ask me that, Felix,” he says, so low that he wonders if Felix can even hear. “Not anymore.”

He shuts the door behind him before he can hear if Felix responds. 

* * *

Felix only tries to escape once; Sylvain had put a guard outside the door for this exact situation, and they are able to force him back into bed fairly easily. Sylvain sleeps poorly that night, and even though he wants to go see Felix he holds off and heads to his office instead. Now that the beast is dead there are things he needs to do, restoration to the nearby villages that it had wreaked havoc on, supplies he needed to send to people who had had their crops or livestock destroyed. He buries himself in his work and tries not to think about Felix, but when there is a knock on his door a few hours later, he gratefully welcomes the distraction. 

“Yes?”

One of his soldiers enters, bowing before she says, “Felix Fraldarius has requested to see you.”

He almost corrects her:  _ Duke. Duke Fraldarius has requested to see me.  _ But that isn’t right, of course. Felix is not a duke. Felix is barely a man anymore, just a hand that wields a sword. Perhaps in another life things didn’t wither away like this, but this is the only life Sylvain knows. 

Perhaps it would have been better to stay by Dimitri’s side. Perhaps he and Felix could have died together at Gronder field and kept their promise. 

It doesn’t matter now.

Felix is arguing with the Healer when Sylvain arrives; she looks up gratefully and says, “My lord --”

Felix interrupts. “My ribs are almost healed. When can I go?”

Sylvain doesn’t answer him, instead speaking to the Healer. “Would you be comfortable releasing him?”

She casts a nervous look at Felix but shakes her head. “No, Margrave. His ribs may be healing well, but any extended activity is liable to open his wounds.”

Felix calls her an unkind name. Sylvain closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath before smiling kindly at the Healer. “You may go, Eva,” he says. She nods, shaky, and Sylvain waits until she closes the door behind her before he turns to Felix. 

“I am going to tell you this once,” he says, voice calm. “If you ever speak to a member of my house like that again, I will throw you out on the streets, injuries be damned. And just in case you think that’s a nice, easy way to get out of here like you so desperately wish, I promise that --”

Sylvain does not get to finish his threat. “I know,” Felix says. “That was too far. I will apologize to her.”

Sylvain stares him down for a few long moments before he sighs and takes a seat beside Felix’s bed. “They said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes. I was hoping after a good night’s sleep you would be sick enough of me that you’d be willing to let me leave.”

Sylvain laughs half-heartedly. “I wouldn’t count on it, Felix. You have been far more annoying than this.”

Felix continues to glare, but Sylvain lets it slide off of him like water. “Come on, Felix. That can’t be all you wanted. You had to know I wouldn’t let you leave.”

Felix is quiet; Sylvain thinks that he’s not going to answer him, that he’s just going to sit there and sulk, but eventually he says, “Do you have children?”

He hadn’t been expecting this, and it throws him off guard. It takes him a moment to answer. “Yes. Four.”

Felix exhales heavily; Sylvain isn’t sure if it’s a laugh or if he’s just surprised. “Crests?”

This makes Sylvain smile. “Not a one,” he says. “Why did you really call me, Felix?”

Felix looks away, looking down at his hands. “Maybe I just wanted to see you,” he says, deathly quiet. 

Sylvain wants to kill him. Sylvain wants, more than that, to kiss him. Wants to grab his stupid face and kiss him and tell him to stay, this time. 

He swallows. “You don’t get to say that to me,” he says. He keeps his voice low to stop it from breaking. Felix still has not looked up. 

“I know,” he agrees. 

Sylvain is up and pacing before he even really knows it. “See, that is unfair, Felix. Because I was fine, we were going to go this whole time never facing it head-on but I was okay with that. But now you go and do this.” The pain in his torso is sharp and flaring with each step, with each over exaggerated movement of his hands. He sits back down in the chair. “But if you want to talk about it so bad, then let’s talk about it.”

Felix finally looks up at him. “Who says I want to talk about it?”

“Because you brought it up. And if it’s not because you wanted to talk to me then it was because you were being cruel, and I want to believe you wouldn’t do that.”

Felix scowls again. Sylvain thinks it’s lucky that they had this standoff while Felix was injured, to ensure he couldn’t run. “Do you remember our promise, Felix?”

Felix leans back, caught off guard. Finally he says, “Yes.”

“Are you going back on your word?”

“It was a childhood promise, Sylvain. Things change.”

“For you, maybe.”

Now when Felix speaks, he sounds angry, as if he’d been beaten in a fight. “It’s not like it was easy, you know,” he says. “It’s not like it didn’t hurt me, too.”

“Then why did you do it?”  _ Why wasn’t I enough for you to stay? _

“It wasn’t about you,” Felix says, still sounding annoyed. Sylvain knows it’s his most classic move to hide his pain, but it still fucking irritates him. “It was about --”

“Do not even think of using that line on me. I was the  _ king  _ of that line.”

Felix cuts off. He picks at a bandage beneath his shirt, and Sylvain resists the urge to slap his hands away and tell him to stop. 

“I’m just saying… it’s not like it didn’t mean anything.”

Sylvain looks at him, takes one last long look. His hair is longer than it ever was, but thinner. His eyes are still sharp, but they're not as bright, not as vivid. As if the light had drained out of them. The day before they marched on Enbarr Sylvain had laid beside him and thought that maybe all of this was worth it, if he had Felix. 

He stands up. “Just didn’t mean enough to stay, I guess,” he says. When he gets to the door he turns around once more. One last look. Felix turns to him and looks him in the eye, and they stay like that for a moment. “I would have gone with you, you know,” Sylvain says. “If you’d asked.”

Felix nods. “I know. That’s why I didn’t ask.”

* * *

Three days later, the Healer clears Felix to go. Some years later (although not nearly as many as he would have liked) someone drops Felix’s favourite sword on his doorstep, promise officially broken. 

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @felixfraldaddy
> 
> its up to you who sylvain married! was it a friend who knew about felix? was it a random woman who will never understand why he can't give all of his heart to her? who knows!


End file.
